Guest Voice: Nebraska abolishes death penalty

This editorial originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 25.

Last Wednesday, the same day the Missouri Supreme Court set a July 14 execution date for convicted murderer David Zink, Nebraska's single-house Legislature voted to abolish capital punishment.

Go figure.

The two states share a border, though admittedly a short one. They share Midwestern values, though admittedly Missouri's have turned pretty Deep South in recent years. They share conservative-dominated politics. Republicans have veto-proof majorities in both houses of the Missouri Legislature. Nebraska's Legislature officially is nonpartisan, but those who keep track say the 49-member "uni-cam" has 35 Republicans, 13 Democrats and one independent.

And yet the unicam voted 30-13, with 17 Republican "ayes," to abolish the death penalty. It is largely a theoretical issue because the state hasn't executed anyone since 1997. There are 11 inmates on its death row.

Missouri has executed 56 men since 1997, including 10 in 2014 alone. That tied Missouri with Texas, which has 20 million more people, for the year's most. Two more execution dates have been set: June 9 for Richard Strong, 48, convicted of the stabbing deaths in St. Ann in 2000 of Eva Washington and her 2-year-old daughter, Zandrea Thomas. Zink's date comes up five weeks later. He was convicted of the 2001 abduction and strangulation of Amanda Morton, 19, of Strafford.

Clearly Nebraska's conservatives are a more enlightened breed than Missouri's.

Their case for opposing the death penalty is steeped in classical conservative theory about limiting the role of government. In floor debate, Sen. Colby Coash, R-Lincoln, said, "If any other system in our government was as ineffective and inefficient as is our death penalty, we conservatives would have gotten rid of it a long, long time ago."

"The death penalty fails to live up to a lot of conservative ideals," Marc Hyden, a coordinator with Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, told the Wall Street Journal. "It's not pro-life, it's not limited-government, and it doesn't deter crime."

There's also the question of cost. A death penalty case carries about $1 million more in long-term costs than a non-capital case.

None of this persuades Nebraska's Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts, who has vowed to veto the bill, even though there appears to be more than enough votes to override him.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Ricketts announced that the state had stocked up on the execution drugs it needed for the three-drug lethal-injection protocol that the state has never employed. In 1997, when Nebraska last executed anyone, it still used the electric chair.

Many states, including Missouri, have abandoned the three-drug process because no U.S. or European manufacturer will sell the drugs for use in capital punishment. Mr. Ricketts got his supply from India. He may have to eat the $51,000 cost if the unicam overrides his veto, or if federal courts block the use of Indian-made drugs, as has happened in other states.

There is simply no argument, from any place on the political spectrum, that capital punishment serves any purpose but satisfying an urge for revenge. That is not nothing, but neither is it justice. Missouri one day will realize that. The sooner the better.